This morning I woke up bright and early to make my way to the medical building so that I could be picked up and brought to the government hospital Pelonomi with some of the Afrikaans students. In order to get to Pelonomi, we had to drive through the not-so-nice part of town, so I got to see a glimpse of what life is like for the poorer South Africans. The students I was with were assigned to the trauma ward. When I heard I was going to be in trauma I was expecting really exciting things to be happening all the time and I imagined that there would be several mangled bodies being rushed through the door at all times. In reality, it was actually much less exciting. The third years (who I was paired with) were themselves paired with fourth years, who were actually doing the majority of the work. The fourth years went around to each patient in the ward and just did a basic check up to update the charts. I didn't get to see many injuries because most of the patients were completely covered in blankets because they were so cold. I did get to see the inside of a broken jaw and a stab wound in a woman's neck. There were a lot of different types of injuries, but a vast majority of were results of either vehicle collisions or assaults. There were a few cases that were particularly sad because there wasn't anything else the doctors could do to help the patients. The first patient came in with a severe head injury, but because he was admitted over eight hours after the injury, the doctors were unable to operate on him. Rather, they gave him antibiotics and sent him home in hopes that his injury would heal itself. Quite a few patients were unable to be treated as thoroughly as they would somewhere else simply because of a lack of resources. I enjoyed trauma, I just wished I would have been able to see a new patient come in from an ambulance. After the hospital rounds, I went back to campus and met with the program director at the medical school and she welcomed Zach, Jon, and me and answered all the questions we still had. Following lunch, we went to OB/GYN class and learned about all about pregnancies, what makes them high-risk, and how to diagnose them. Later on in the evening, I rejoined the Afrikaans students at the hospital while they were on-call in the trauma unit. I was hoping that this time I would get a chance to see something exciting, as the students saw the previous night. Unfortunately, no one came in, so it made for a rather boring night. One neat thing about spending time with the Afrikaans students is just listening to them talk to each other. I think it's pretty fascinating to watch people communicate so quickly in a completely different language from what I know. They tried to teach me a few words, but it's a difficult language. Hopefully by the end of this month I will have learned some words and phrases that I can bring back to the states. Tomorrow I will be with the Afrikaans students yet again, but this time they will be working with the vascular unit, which is one that I am much more familiar with, having spent the entirety of June shadowing a vascular surgeon back home.
P.S. My security card finally works and now I don't have to call the RA every time I want to enter or leave the building and I could not be more excited. Also I was pleased to learn that they sell Aero bars and Smarties over here, so I gladly picked up a couple from the market on campus.
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